At San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, Marvel announced the next Avengers movie, Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Comics nerds went nuts, but people less familiar with Marvel were left scratching their heads. Unlike, say, the Red Skull or Doctor Octopus, Ultron isn’t as well known of a villain. So here’s his backstory, why fans are so excited… and also why fans are confused.

So, Ultron, I’m assuming he’s not a cleaning product.

Nope, he’s a robot who wants to wipe out humanity and replace them with robots. Specifically, he’s a homicidal robot built by an Avenger who we haven’t seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hank Pym.

Wait, wait, wait, who’s Hank Pym?

He’s one of the central Avengers over the run of the series. He has a number of aliases: Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket. Mostly Hank is defined by three things: His scientific genius, his tendency to have size change powers thanks to “Pym particles”, and the fact that he’s severely mentally unstable and yet people still let him play with highly dangerous weapons systems.

I’m starting to see why Ultron was a bad idea.

Ohhhhhh yeah. Hank built Ultron with the best of intentions, but, unsurprisingly, a robot made out of indestructible metal (adamantium, the same stuff that’s glued to Wolverine’s skeleton and claws) with the most highly advanced weapons a superscientist can build is going to start some trouble. Whenever Ultron shows up, the Avengers are generally in for a very, very bad day.

In a nutshell, it’s basically the Avengers fighting the Terminator. Only the Terminator can fly. And has a lot more guns. And probably won’t be inexplicably Austrian.

Are there any other reasons to be excited?

Beyond robot fights? Well, Ultron is generally vulnerable to vibranium, another fictional metal in the Marvel Universe, and that only comes from Wakanda, the home of beloved Avenger Black Panther. And indeed, we’ve seen hints that Black Panther will be in the next Avengers movie.

So what about this Thanos guy? The big purple dude with the silly chin? Wasn’t he at the end of the first Avengers movie?

That’s an excellent question! Nobody’s really sure just what Marvel is up to in that regard. We do know that Iron Man 3 has kicked off Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Avengers: Age Of Ultron make up the rest. We also know that Vin Diesel would make a pretty good Thanos, and he’s apparently going to be working for Marvel in short order.

We’ll have to wait… well, actually just until November for the answers to start coming in, but it promises to be a lot of fun.

That could be one way to go, but I’d guess they’d go more along the lines of what Ultron did in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, hacking into every network on the planet and enslaving all machinery to his will.

This could get some good set-pieces, with Hulk and Thor fighting fighter jets, robot armies of differing sizes, Cap, Widow and Hawkeye bring the more human element to it and Stark trying to outsmart and disable Ultron.

Now, the only thing that’s not clear to me at all is where Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch fit into an Ultron story, aside from the Vision/SW connection.

Ant-Man is Phase 3, so if anything all of the AI building is going to be Tony Stark instead of Hank Pym, which honestly isn’t a bad thing since there are a lot of problems putting him in a family-friendly (ish) storyline.

Edgar Wright won’t say which Ant-Man his movie is about. All he will say is that it fits within the Marvel Movie Universe but that it’s a stand alone project. Could be Eric O’Grady or Scott Lang. I’ve got my money on Eric O’Grady since that would give you a connection to Shield.

Yes, and yes. Early, early on in the Avengers Wonder Man was sent by Baron Zemo to join the Avengers and then destroy them from the inside. Of course he eventually turns on Zemo and saves the Avengers, dying in the process. Years later Ultron creates the Vision and like a dumb ass uses Wonder Man’s recorded brain patterns and Vision basically does the exact same thing Wonder Man did turning on Ultron.

Then Scarlet Witch marries The Vision, Wonder Man is brought back to life and we spend the next 20 years in a horrible love triangle where Wonder Man is upset because the girl he loves is married to a robot with his brain patterns.

Yeah, yeah, but then..WEST COAST AVENGERS!!! Also, more bizarre love triangles, because CALIFORNIA, I think. So….um…I kinda hate myself for liking West Coast Avengers more than the regular Avengers when I was a kid.

I’m with you Iron Mike, I LOVED the hell out of the West Coast Avengers. To be fair though at that time it was the team with Iron Man and Hawkeye on it and the regular Avengers had Dr. Druid and The Black Knight (yawn).

I think they’re holding Thanos back until they can get back more of their properties. If you’re going to do a big screen Infinity Gauntlet storyline why not throw in some mutants and the Fantastic Four in there?

Im seriously lacking in nerd cred here, but why cant you have Hank Pym create Ultron throughout the credit sequence and then cut to live action after its been established? Pym as an engineer for Stark Industries who is working with Tony to automate the Iron Man suit? Its already been established that Stark has an affinity for people who are just as smart, even smarter than him, as evident by his conversations and respect for Bruce Banner in Avengers, so why wouldnt he hire or bank roll some of that intellegence?

The rest writes it self out. You keep Pym as the creator of Ultron and keep him cannon in the movie continuity for possible future movies, Ant-Man or otherwise. Think of the way they worked Beast into X2 for that brief moment.

They could just have it be Stark comes up with an idea for a series of defense robots and Pym builds them based on his own designs which ends in the birth of Ultron. It’s an easy way to introduce the character since him and Stark know each other before the Avengers in the comics.

You just can’t have Ultron without Pym. Not everything in the Marvel Universe has to revolve around Stark Enterprises. It’s getting ridiculous that everything Marvel related is turning into the Robert Downey show. They’ve even managed the mess up the best comic book hero of all time (Spiderman) with the god awful reboot. Just stick to the original storyline as much as possible, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Oh, are we doing plot speculation?! Well, how about Tony Stark decided to work with SHIELD and design a new robo-trooper to help with the whole super-villain problem. His first design is his “vision” of a better enforcer, something more stealthy and conservative(see what I did there?). SHIELD makes a bigger, more weaponized version based off this design. The suits are designed to work only for a central AI unit called Ultron. Things go wrong, so Tony (for some reason or another) decides to put Jarvis in the prototype armor and BOOM… Avengers 2. I’ll expect my check in the mail, Mr. Whedon.

From what I’m reading, everyone seems worried about how Ultron is created without Pym, seeing as Ant-Man isn’t supposed to come until Phase 3. I think that’s just the point, *Ant-Man* isn’t coming until Phase 3, but Pym is around in Phase 2 to create Ultron/Vision.

Could be he feels so bad for messing it all up with Ultron that he starts experimenting with the Pym-particles to turn himself into a super-hero.

Hank Pym can still create Ultron without being Ant-Man. Someone earlier points out that Ultron could be an AI version of an IM suit, just built by “Pym Labs”, and probably as the closing piece of the film before AVENGERS2. This way, there’s no need for an “origin” scene in the film, and we have more time for Ultron and Vision.

When its all done, Pym is “inspired” to become Ant-Man, likely after making the “secret sauce” as the means to defeat Ultron from inside. Ending scene can have him with the helmet and antenna, “getting down”.